Oct 25, 2020 3 min read

Seven local high school football teams will participate in the WPIAL playoffs, with four of those playing home games in the first round.

The teams at Peters Township, Belle Vernon, McGuffey, California and Avella were assured of playoff berths based on their regular-season finishes. Washington and South Fayette received wild-card berths when the WPIAL released brackets and seeds for the playoffs Saturday night.

In Class 5A, undefeated Peters Township (6-0), the Allegheny Six Conference champion, received the No. 3 seed and will host Woodland Hills (5-2), the third-place team from the Big East Conference, Friday night in a first-round game. The Indians had their first undefeated regular season since 1975.

Higher-seeded teams will have home-field advantage in all rounds through the semifinals. That means Peters Township is looking at the possibility of a semifinal matchup at No. 2 seed Gateway (4-0), in what would be a rematch of last year’s Class 5A championship game. The top seed in Class 5A is Northeast Conference champion Pine-Richland (6-0).

The highest-seeded local team is McGuffey (6-1), the Class 2A Century Conference champion. The Highlanders will host Serra Catholic (4-0) out of the Allegheny Conference.

“With only eight teams in the playoffs, it was pretty easy to get it down to two or three that we thought we might play,” McGuffey coach Ed Dalton said. “Serra was one of those teams. They’re good. When you get down to eight, they’re all good.”

Serra has not played since Oct. 9 because COVID-19 issues shut down the program for two weeks. The Eagles did not score fewer than 48 points in any of their four games and have the highest-scoring offense in Class 2A, averaging 52.3 points per game. McGuffey, however, has the stingiest defense in the classification, allowing only 9.6 points per game, and has given up only one touchdown in the first half of a game all season.

“They’ll be rested and healthy,” Dalton said of Serra. “Would I want two weeks off if we were playing good football? I wouldn’t,” Dalton said.

Washington (5-2) is the No. 5 seed in Class 2A and will play at undefeated Apollo Ridge (5-0), also out of the Allegheny Conference. Apollo Ridge had two regular-season games canceled, one because Summit Academy chose not to field a team this year and the other was against Serra on Oct. 16.

“We were so focused on getting to the playing and beating Frazier to get in that we didn’t put much thought into who we might play,” Washington coach Mike Bosnic said. “I had heard that Apollo Ridge is who we might get, so I’m not surprised. I thought we had a chance to get a home game.”

The other local teams with home games are Belle Vernon (5-1), the No. 4 seed in Class 4A, and California, the No. 4 seed in Class A.

Belle Vernon will host Chartiers Valley (6-1). The lone loss for the Colts was to top-seeded Aliquippa.

California, though undefeated and the Tri-County South Conference champion, was seeded only fourth and the Trojans have a difficult first-round assignment, hosting Shenango (6-1) out of the Big Seven Conference. The game will feature two of the top rushers and scorers in the WPIAL this year, California’s Jaeden Zuzak and Shenango’s Reis Watkins.

Avella (5-2), which played its way into the postseason by knocking off Carmichaels in a winner-take-all regular-season finale for second place in the Tri-County South, is seeded sixth in Class A and will be on the road against Jeannette (6-1), the runner-up in the Eastern Conference.